Wednesday, October 18, 2017

A ‘Small Color Revolution’ Breaks Out inside Russia – Among the Circassians

Paul
Goble

Staunton, October 18 – One of the
defining characteristics of the Putin years has been Moscow’s fear that someone
somewhere will succeed in launching a color revolution within the borders of
the Russian Federation and thus undermine or even overthrow the existing regime.
Now, a Nezavisimaya gazeta journalist
suggests, such a revolution may have started.

In an article in today’s edition
entitled “The Small ‘Tulip Revolution of the Circassians,” Artur Priymak says
that Circassian efforts to defend their holy tree and their anger at official
treatment of Ruslan Gvashev who has led that effort have attracted attention “at
the highest levels” (ng.ru/events/2017-10-18/11_430_revolution.html).

Gvashev points out that Circassians
from across the North Caucasus decided to say a prayer in May at a tulip tree
in Sochi for their ancestors who fought the Russian advance in tsarist times.
But officials weren’t prepared to allow that because the tree is not listed in the
kray’s register of holy places. For going ahead anywhere, Gvashev was arrested
and charged.

He declared and then ended a hunger
strike against his mistreatment, Priymak says; and he attracted broad support
from Circassians. When officials refused his appeals, the journalist says, “many
citizens of Abkhazia were ready as a mark of protest to give up their Russian
passports.”

Abakhaz officials flew to Moscow and Sochi to
discuss the situation and to point out the significance of the tulip tree in
Circassian life, according to Abkhaz political scientist David Dasania. He
added that as a result, the views of Russian officials had changed and that
they will consult more broadly with the Circassians.

“Now the Sochi authorities will
consult in the first instance with respected Shapsugs [a subgroup of the Circassians]
and of course with Ruslan Gvashev,” Dasania says. Others including some in the
Adyge Khase organization “will lose status as negotiators” even if they retain
their positions in that organization.

According to Dasania, what has taken
place with Gvashev is entirely the work of local officials and there has not
been any “’order’ from Moscow” in his case.The local bureaucrats understood the actions at the tree not as a prayer
which they would have had to respect but as a meeting whose participants could
be arrested for failing to get approval in advance.

So far, the Circassians have not
succeeded in convincing the local officials that they are wrong, and
consequently, on Monday of this week, the court of first instance left Gvashev’s
conviction in place even after a kray court reversed its original finding,
something that has clearly outraged the Circassians and created a situation no
one in Moscow wants.

And while the Russian journalist’s
application of the term “tulip revolution” to this series of events may be
overblown, it is clearly the case that yet another people has found its voice and
a way to use the contradictions within the powers that be to advance its agenda,
thus meeting one of the key parts of the definition of a color revolution.